…and after that, out of all whooping!

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Friday

My daughter has been pining for a basketball hoop for ages. I was dithering, mostly because the thought of having to put it together filled me with dread. When I was shopping around, I saw that it was possible to pay someone to do the assembly and I seriously considered it. On Friday I picked my daughter up after her quartet/violin recital practice and we finally went to pick up her long-awaited basketball hoop. I asked the kids for help getting the box out of the back of the car. To my surprise, they not only got it out of the car, they immediately got to work assembling it.

They worked for as long as they could, using flashlights until they finally gave up for the night.

I helped too, obviously…by holding a flashlight.

Saturday

My daughter spent the morning diligently warming up for her violin recital…

As always, her big brothers did their best to help her keep her eye on the ball.

We were running early, so we killed a few minutes at the library, which happens to be right next door to the church where the recital took place…

We picked up a couple of Pocket Poems on our way out of the library…

Show time!

Quickie post-recital haircut…

…aaaaand back to work!

I was feeling guilty for letting my kids do all the work putting the hoop together. I knew I should really lend a helping hand. I rolled up my sleeves and started to peel the plastic off the backboard. A gasp of outrage and betrayal stopped me dead in my tracks. I turned around to see my kids staring at me as if I had just kicked a kitten.

“That’s the best part! We’ve been saving that up for last!!”

“OH! Sorry!!”

I went to meet my friend for dinner and a concert to take a break from my labors!

In keeping with the astronomy theme presaged by the Walt Whitman poem I had randomly picked at the library earlier that day, we heard Gustav Holst’s The Planets and Kaija Saariaho’s Orion.

Sunday

After church it was back to work on the basketball hoop…

The appreciative siblings gave the honor of making the first basket to the boy who did the lion’s share of the work:

And then it was game on!

“True story,” I told my kids. I got my first ‘C’ ever because of basketball. We were doing a basketball unit in P.E. and your grade for the quarter was based on the average of a bunch of different layups. Every time you missed the basket, your grade would go down by a whole letter. So I ended up with a ‘C’.” My daughter sent the ball in my direction. “Here Mama, let’s see if you’ve improved!”